Hello, I'm Helen Bradley.
Welcome to this video tutorial.
In this tutorial I'll show you how to create a Spirograph very quickly and very easily
in Photoshop.
As usual before we get started with this tutorial we're going to look and see what it is that
we're aiming at.
This is one of the Spirographs of the kind that we're going to create.
Here's another one.
This one is actually the most complex because it gets smaller as it goes on.
And here's another one.
This one is a little bit more open.
So I'm going to show you three steps in making a Spirograph.
Each one of them is going to be just a little bit more technical than the last.
I'm going to choose File, New and I'm just creating a 1,800 by 1,800 pixel document.
I'm using Photoshop CS6 here.
It will be the same in Photoshop CC the new Creative Cloud version.
I'm clicking the Pen tool.
I'm making sure I have no fill but I do have a stroke and I'm thinking the stroke is probably
a little bit too heavy.
Those examples were a little on the heavy side so I'm going to down my stroke to 1 pixel.
And now I'm just going to (drag, click drag?) to create some sort of an interesting line
and when I've created the line I'll just press Escape to finish.
And this creates a new shape layer.
I'm first going to convert this from a shape layer into a rasterized layer.
So I'll right click and choose Rasterize Layer and then I'll duplicate this with Layer, New
Layer via Copy.
So I now have two copies of the exact same shape on two different layers.
I want to free transform this top shape so I could choose Edit and then Free Transform
or I could press Ctrl and T which is what I'm going to do in the next shapes that we're
going to create.
But for now let's just do it via Edit, Free Transform.
The simplest transformation is just to rotate the shape a certain number of degrees.
You'll want to use a number of degrees that will divide equally into 360.
That will give you a better result.
So I'm choosing 10 because 10 will go into 360 without leaving any fractional component
left over.
And I'll just click the Checkmark tool here.
Now all I need to do is to hold down Ctrl Alt and Shift, that would be Command Option
Shift on the Mac, and press the letter T. And I'm going to do that repeatedly because
every time I do this I'm copying and transforming that layer that I just created.
(And I want to do it in this case because I've got a rotation of 10 degrees I'll want
to do that 35 times to create a full rotation on my shape?).
And I've just done that now.
You can see I'm in shape 1, copy 35.
So now I'm going to click the topmost shape and I'm going to Shift click on the bottommost
layer so that all my layers are selected and I'm going to merge them.
I could choose Layer and then choose Merge Layers.
As you can see we could just press Ctrl E if we wanted to.
That makes this just all on a single layer.
I'm going to Command click on the New Layer icon here to add a new layer and I've pre-prepared
a gradient here.
It's a radial gradient and it's a blue and yellow gradient that just makes a really nice
little background for my images.
And let's just crop it.
And there's our first very simple Spirograph.
This is kind of an open one.
I kind of like that.
Now let's create another one.
We're going to choose File, New again, exactly the same process.
I'm going to grab my Pen tool.
I'm going to click and drag to make a shape.
When I get to the end of it I'll press Escape.
I'll rasterize this layer by right clicking and choose Rasterize Layer and then I'll duplicate
it with Layer, New Layer via Copy.
I also want to transform this so I'll press Ctrl and the letter T, Command T on the Mac,
to get into the Free Transform tool.
So far everything is identical to the previous Spirograph.
This time however, I'm going to change the point around which it rotates.
It rotates by default around the center but I want to rotate it around something a little
more interesting like this side here.
But I still want to use something like 10 degrees.
And I'll click the Checkmark.
And now again I'm going to rotate another 35 times.
But this time you'll see that the shape is a little bit different because of where it's
rotating.
When I get back to the end I'm not the slightest bit concerned that most of this was off the
edge.
I'm just going to select the first layer, Shift click on the bottommost layer and I'm
going to merge these layers together either by right clicking and choose Merge Layers
or I could press Ctrl E, Command E on the Mac.
To overcome the problem that we've lost some of this image off the edge I'm just going
to choose Image and then Reveal All and that solves that problem.
Let's just add a new layer behind it and let's add our fill to it.
And so this is the second of the shapes.
It's even more open than the previous one, kind of a really nice Spirograph.
I like that one a lot.
Ok, let's have a look at the one that shrinks as it goes.
Again, same process File, New.
There's nothing different about this so far.
I'm just going to create a shape, press the Escape key to finish off my line shape.
I'm going to make it a raster layer by rasterizing the layer.
I'm going to duplicate the layer.
All of this is exactly the same as all the others.
And I'm going to press Ctrl or Command T to go into Free Transform.
I'm going to again select this side point for rotating the image around.
I'm going to choose 10 percent.
But the difference this time is I'm going to change this width and height.
So I'm going to make sure that they're joined together and I'm going to change them so that
they are both 95 percent.
What that means is that each of these shapes is only going to be 95 percent of the size
of the one before.
So it's going to shrink as it rotates.
I'll click the Checkmark here, and again, another 35 times with Ctrl Alt Shift T, Command
Option Shift T on the Mac.
This time you can see the thing is getting smaller as we go and in actual fact we could
go well beyond the 35 times this time because we're creating this sort of shell like shape.
And it will continue to rotate interestingly even beyond the first 35 rotations.
So let's just crop this.
Let's make all these shapes on the one layer, merge them all together by selecting the layers
and Ctrl or Command E. I'm going to Ctrl or Command click on the New Layer icon to create
a new layer.
And let's just go and create our background for that.
And that's a very different kind of Spirograph.
As you can see these Spirographs are very easy to create and you can use them in all
sorts of things as background elements in your collages.
I'm sure you'll find lots of ways to use them.
I'm Helen Bradley.
Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial.
Look out for more tutorials on my YouTube channel here.
Consider subscribing to the YouTube channel so you'll be advised when new videos are released.
And visit my website at projectwoman.com for more tips, tricks and tutorials on Photoshop,
Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, Illustrator and a whole lot more.